


how i dream to feel

by myrmidryad



Series: Underground Dreaming [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Magic, Non-Binary Jehan, Urban Fantasy, it'll come up more later i promise, street performer Grantaire, though it isn't exactly obvious or anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-06
Updated: 2013-11-06
Packaged: 2017-12-31 17:18:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1034295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myrmidryad/pseuds/myrmidryad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The creation of illusions was a tricky side of magic. A sort of cross between conjuring and traditional art, it required imagination, first and foremost, but most importantly an excellent memory and phenomenal powers of concentration. Illusionists were the artists of the magical world, and therefore looked down on by both practitioners of ‘real’ magic, and ‘real’ art. Illusions weren’t conjurations – they were ghosts, unable to touch or be touched, unable to influence the senses beyond a temporary trick of the eyes. Illusions were cheap deceptions that didn’t hold up under scrutiny and had only recently been accepted as a subject of semi-serious study in the past decade.</p><p> </p><p>Grantaire and Jehan finally get out of the tiny apartment and Grantaire gets to show off the new illusion show he's created while they've been in hiding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how i dream to feel

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from the lyrics of [Hanna's Theme Vocal Version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4mpQAHDBc) by The Chemical Brothers.

“Jehan?” 

“No.” 

Grantaire sighed and poked his foot through the slats of the bunk above, digging into the mattress. “Jehaaaaaan.” 

“Noooooooooo.” 

“Just take a quick look for me?” 

Jehan made a sound that was probably meant to convey his disgust for the farcical parade that was currently their lives, but just made him sound like he had something stuck in his throat. “Only if you come up here,” he said finally. 

Grantaire heaved himself into a sitting position and clambered up to the top bunk to flop down next to Jehan, who looked utterly miserable. “Hey,” Grantaire muttered, curling around him and kissing his cheek. “You okay?” 

“I need to go outside,” Jehan whispered. “I need to feel the wind.” Grantaire nodded and for a while they stayed like that – Jehan a limp body with Grantaire wrapped around him, head on his shoulder and hand fisted in his shirt. 

They’d been stuck inside for over a week now, and the only person they’d seen apart from Éponine on her quick food drop-offs was the beautiful blonde student who’d given them a wonderfully entertaining night and vanished the morning after. Grantaire was trying not to think about him, because having a demigod drop in unexpectedly was startling enough on its own, but then Enjolras (god, what a _name_ ) had also been utterly charming, and slept in the same bed as Grantaire with no problems, and called his stupid shotgun spell _clever_ , and had been intrigued rather than weirded out by Jehan’s non-binary bone magic experiments. 

Also, Grantaire had woken up to find he’d been _cuddling him in his sleep_ , and remembering that made him hope that Enjolras never contacted him again, because if he did Grantaire might spontaneously combust out of delayed embarrassment. 

“Weren’t you going to show me something?” Jehan said after some time. 

Grantaire hummed and rolled over to lie on his back, finding Jehan’s hand with one of his and lifting his other arm up above them, waving his fingers. “You watching?” 

“Uh huh.” 

“Okay.” 

Grantaire concentrated and suddenly his fingers weren’t fingers, but tendrils of seaweed. Flat with rippled edges, waving in invisible currents. Other weeds grew up around them from Grantaire’s palm, and the air around them dappled as though it was sunlight-speckled water. Grantaire squeezed Jehan’s hand, and a tiny fish emerged from the tangle of weeds. Shining orange with fins as thin as gauze that waved in the water, little body propelled forward by a twitch of its tail, it swam a few centimetres from its seaweed sanctuary before losing its nerve and darting back quickly. 

Jehan squeezed his hand back, and Grantaire looked away for a moment to check his reaction. His heart ballooned when he saw Jehan’s small smile, and he grinned in response. “What do you think?” 

“It’s beautiful,” Jehan told him. “Can you make the fish come out again?” 

Grantaire looked back at his seaweed hand, and the fish emerged once more. No longer shy, it turned a quick circle before coming to hover over Jehan’s head, sunlight from the surface of the water above reflecting off its scales and setting them alight in little glinting patterns that never stayed still for a second, moving as the fish’s body undulated. 

“It’s beautiful,” Jehan said admiringly, bringing up a hand to hold fingers just in front of the little fish. There were no extra shadows or light patches on his skin – Grantaire couldn’t create illusions like that on the spot. “Did you do this just now?” 

“Pretty much. I was thinking of making a big one for a show.” 

“You got any music for it?” 

“No. You got any suggestions?” 

Jehan pulled his iPod out from under the pillow and started scrolling through it. Grantaire let the illusion fade and shifted up the bed to see what he was looking at. “Score Eastern,” he read as Jehan selected it. “Your genres are so weird.” 

“Arranging music by mood is the only way of organising it that makes any sense,” Jehan said simply. “Besides, the fish made me think of oriental koi paintings. And now I want a koi fish tattoo, but that’s not the point. Here,” he passed Grantaire the headphones and selected a song. 

Grantaire projected the music to Jehan (one of his hilariously useless natural talents) so they could both hear it and squinted at the iPod’s display. “Princess Mononoke? That’s the one with the giant wolves, isn’t it?” 

“Yes it is.” Jehan closed his eyes. “What sort of show did you have in mind?” 

“Not sure yet, but I want big fish swimming between people. Maybe make the surface of the water around thigh-level or so.” 

“If they’re standing in it, you’ll have to make a lot of ripples.” 

“Yeah, but once I fixed up the set points that wouldn’t be so hard, I figured. The light play would be trickier. This is too dramatic,” he added. “I was thinking something more mysterious?” 

“You want something with a build-up?” 

“Maybe. Yeah, that’d be good, actually,” Grantaire nodded, staring up at the ceiling. “Start out with little fish like the one I showed you and make the big ones a surprise. I like this one,” he added. “But it’s too soft.” He checked the title anyway – _The Journey to the West_ – and pulled a pen from his pocket to write it on the back of his hand. “It’s pretty,” he explained to Jehan. “Could use it as a filler.” 

They listened to several more pieces before Grantaire began to smile. _Procession of the Spirits_ , the iPod display said, and it wasn’t what he’d imagined – it didn’t start out slow, build up to something sweeping, and taper down again gently – but it was perfect nonetheless. Little fish would dance for the quiet notes, and big fish would swim majestically for the loud brass parts. It would give them presence and power, the flutes and strings emphasising the delicacy of the little fish in comparison. 

He could see it in his head, the way it would unfold. He would sit on the ground (water up to his chest or shoulders) and create a garden of weeds around him, hiding his crossed legs and guiding hands. The little notes at the beginning would be little goldfish and silvery minnows flitting between the strands, venturing out a little way before coming back, and the first few big parts would be shadows in the water. Not threatening, but _grand_. The royalty the little fish would swim around – they would be the courtiers, and the big koi would be the kings and queens. 

The song finished and Grantaire grabbed the iPod to replay it, desperate not to lose the mental images he was building on. 

The big koi would be the size of seals, and they would swim slowly between the marks the viewers would be standing on. He’d space them just right so they would have enough room to flick their tails without touching anyone and spoiling the illusion. The big ones would be gold and orange and red – deep colours, dark colours, shining metallic and shadowed by…lily pads? Maybe. Yes, actually, lily pads or something similar to float on the surface would be good. And the stems would be something for the littler fish to spiral around like overexcited children. 

He would have to make the ground dark, to create the illusion of a deeper space. Maybe only in the middle, in the space between him and the viewers, just in case any of them didn’t like the idea of being out of their depth. The stems of the lily pads would disappear into darkness, but the overall tone would be light. Watery – blues and greens and perhaps a little brown for depth – but not overwhelmingly so. The play of light through the surface would be the hardest thing to realistically create, but if he could just figure out a few seconds of the pattern he could loop it, and no one would look close enough to tell. 

The song ended and he paused, breathing in, holding the ideas in his head like he held smoke in his lungs. 

“I take it you found a winner?” Jehan asked amusedly. 

“Your love of anime has once again paid off,” Grantaire told him, sitting up so fast he almost hit his head on the ceiling. “I need to craft.” He jumped to the floor and pushed the table against the wall to make some space before sitting down. Jehan grinned over the edge of the top bunk’s railing and watched as Grantaire started to play with illusions of water surface. Making it too tangible made it look too unrealistic, so he decided to have it as just an impression, the way he had with the goldfish illusion he’d shown Jehan. 

He used his phone to get pictures and videos for reference as he worked (Jehan had managed to guess the password for someone’s router) and replayed _Procession of the Spirits_ so many times it was probably well on its way to becoming the most-played song on Jehan’s iPod. 

“You know what?” Jehan said when Grantaire finally collapsed exhausted into bed many hours later. 

“What?” 

“I reckon that’s going to look really fucking good when it’s done.” 

Grantaire laughed and saw scales behind his eyelids. “As long as I don’t go anywhere near Evard’s patch to show it.” 

“Don’t even joke, R, I swear to god, if I have to stay inside for much longer I’m going to start breaking things.” 

Grantaire smiled, and when he slept he dreamed of fish and wide pools of water, thick trees overhead blocking out the light and creating shifting shadow-shapes everywhere he looked. 

 

The creation of illusions was a tricky side of magic. A sort of cross between conjuring and traditional art, it required imagination, first and foremost, but most importantly an excellent memory and phenomenal powers of concentration. Illusionists were the artists of the magical world, and therefore looked down on by both practitioners of ‘real’ magic, and ‘real’ art. Illusions weren’t conjurations – they were ghosts, unable to touch or be touched, unable to influence the senses beyond a temporary trick of the eyes. Illusions were cheap deceptions that didn’t hold up under scrutiny and had only recently been accepted as a subject of semi-serious study in the past decade. 

They weren’t taught in school, or at least not until baccalauréat level education, and then only in some schools. None Grantaire had ever been to, at any rate. People didn’t tend to realise how difficult crafting decent illusions could be until they tried it themselves – an amateur was always recognisable, because their illusions would jump all over the place instead of moving slowly. It was all in the way the eye tracked movements: the instinct was to flick quickly from one point to the next instead of following a motion all the way through. 

Grantaire had gone to open days at several universities to look at their illusion courses even though he’d secretly known at the time he would never actually go. What he’d seen had only confirmed his suspicions – if he tried to study illusion crafting in a real academic environment, they’d tell him that everything he already knew about it was rubbish, that he’d been doing it wrong for years, and that he needed to relearn the craft from the beginning. Why pay people to tell him he was a fool and a failure when he could tell himself that for free? Why waste his time fitting his illusions to their structured program when he could just play around with them in his free time and not worry about grades or deadlines? 

So he hadn’t gone to university. He’d continued practising illusions on his own, for himself and for his friends, and once he figured out that if he made marks for people to stand on they could see his illusions with the clarity he did (no faded details or missing pieces) without having to physically touch him, he started showing strangers too. 

Two A4 pieces of paper laminated together with a carefully drawn seal of connection and something of him inside (nail clippings, hair, blood – the usual) made a mark that let complete strangers see what he saw and hear what he heard if they stood on top of it and didn’t try to distract him. He couldn’t make it work for more than a couple dozen or so, but the smaller crowds made the illusions more intimate, and he liked that. 

He’d met Jehan through a show – he’d sat in front of a wall, set up the marks, and shown off one of his favourite illusions, accompanied by _Hanna’s Theme_ by The Chemical Brothers. A tree growing up the wall behind him, branches growing slowly and green leaves and flowers sprouting from vines and moss. Little chittering squirrel-mouse creatures running up and long the trunk, and brightly-coloured birds flitting in and out of the leaves. 

The trunk grew veins of blue, glowing with electricity in time to the music, and when the beat dropped two minutes and twenty-two seconds in, the tree became three-dimensional and no longer entirely natural. Wires and plugs grew like the vines had grown, and the birds and squirrel-creatures were joined by clockwork and digital animals with glowing blue veins like the tree, circuits and sparks blending seamlessly with leaves and bark. 

It was one of his favourite illusions, and he’d shown it so many times it was like falling into a familiar pattern – singing a favourite song or plaiting someone’s hair. Every part of it was perfectly detailed and streamlined. He knew it so well by now that he was able to watch people’s faces while they watched his creations. His favourite part was when the tree burst from the wall. The delight on their faces was sometimes better than the money they gave afterwards. Money was just coins and notes (usually coins). But those expressions weren’t fake – they _liked_ what he showed them. It lifted their hearts, if only for a couple of minutes, and that was amazing. 

Jehan had emptied his wallet into the cup Grantaire had put out at the end of the chemical tree illusion (as he called it) and gabbled for a full two minutes about how incredible it had been. He’d stayed to watch all the other illusions Grantaire showed that day and asked him a hundred questions about them afterwards. And then he’d just sort of…stayed. 

Grantaire had never had a best friend before, and he wasn’t sure whether he had one now – calling Jehan his best friend seemed to imply that he had a choice out of a group of friends, and ignored Éponine’s presence in his life as well. Neither of them were his best friends, but they knew him better than anyone else. Éponine because they moved in the same shady circles and had ended up trusting each other due to just accepting the shitty parts of each other’s lives. Jehan because he’d decided he liked Grantaire and inserted himself into his life so completely that it felt by now as if he’d always been there. Grantaire didn’t know how he’d survived for so long without him. 

 

When Éponine finally gave them the word that Evard had given up on chasing them and they could leave the tiny one-room apartment they’d been hiding in for almost three weeks now, Jehan looked like he would start crying with happiness. “Oh my god,” he gasped as they stepped outside. After the never-changing temperature of the apartment, fresh air was a blessing. “Have you ever felt anything so good?” 

“Orgasms,” Grantaire answered promptly, and laughed at Jehan’s withering look. “But this is a close second, yeah.” They’d both taken the opportunity to shower before they left, and the air felt especially good against Grantaire’s wet hair. “Let’s ride, Prouvaire.” 

Grantaire’s bike was the only possession he was genuinely attached to. It was an ancient, cream-coloured hulk with rusted springs under the seat and charms wound around the thick frame. The handlebars were curved like ram horns and the rear rack looked like it would fall off at any moment, and Grantaire _loved_ it. He’d made most of the charms himself – ribbons and shoelaces with lightweight pendants spelled for protection from thieves, invisibility, and deterrence against mechanical failure. There were also slipknots dangling from the handlebars for bursts of speed when released, and a few tiny luck bags here and there, tied down securely or tucked out of sight beneath the saddle. 

Jehan had added a tiny padlock to one of the springs under the seat, sealing his love and goodwill to the frame. Grantaire had returned the favour with a padlock of his own on the wire of Jehan’s basket, at the back, close to the handlebar stem. It was, without a doubt, the most sentimental thing he’d ever allowed himself to do. But Jehan was like that – he didn’t guard himself, and Grantaire had become so tangled up around him that it had seemed like a normal thing to do at the time. He’d only realised how out of the ordinary it was for him when Gavroche had asked whether he and Jehan were getting married any time soon. 

They cycled all the way to Montmartre, breathless and giddy to finally be outside again, and Jehan bought them sandwiches from a bistro. “Let’s go to the love wall,” he sighed, tipping his head back and grinning in the sunlight. “You can show off the fish.” 

Grantaire smiled. “Alright.” He’d completed the whole illusion in a record three days, and he was feeling unusually comfortable about it. They cycled up to the Square Jehan-Rictus and settled by the railings surrounding the square. Jehan went inside to look at the wall of love while Grantaire set up his stuff – a cardboard sign that read ‘TO SEE FULL ILLUSION, STAND ON MARK’ with an arrow pointing to a pile of the marks themselves, held in place by a painted stone. He plugged Jehan’s headphones in, playing the soundtrack from Memoirs of a Geisha to get in the mood, though he didn’t project it to the marks just yet. Music was for shows, not general play. 

Medium-sized black and white spotted koi swam lazily through his legs and weeds grew up to lily pads floating above him like little umbrellas. Jehan came out and stood on one of the marks, smiling encouragingly. To anyone not standing on a mark, the illusions would appear to be washed-out patches of colour, and they wouldn’t hear the music at all. Grantaire wasn’t good enough to create illusions everyone could see. He’d heard that was a skill taught at degree level, but his marks were a good enough loophole for him not to care. 

Once seven people were standing on marks they’d taken from the pile, all smiling at the fish, he sat down and killed that illusion. “Don’t go away,” he called, flicking through Jehan’s iPod to get to _Procession of the Spirits_. Once it was cued up, he brought the scene to life with deft gestures of his hands, shadows pooling between him and the semi-circle of people, seaweed sprouting around him and hiding his crossed legs and chest from view. Ripples spread out from his shoulders and people’s legs, and he pressed play. 

People looked around in surprise as they heard the music in their heads instead of with their ears, and Grantaire sent little groups of fish out of the weeds to make pretty patterns under the suggestion of the water’s surface. A little boy holding his mother’s hand grasped for them, but Grantaire pulled them out of his reach with a smile, furrowing his brow slightly as he kept everything working in synch. 

The big koi seemed to glow as he sent two of them out into the space, their bodies slow and ponderous as they swam in a circle and then went to weave between the spectators, almost but not quite brushing legs with fins. The people twisted to watch them, and Grantaire sent a third and a fourth out with a sweeping gesture of his hand, fingers twitching to make the little courtier fish dance. He was a puppeteer without strings, eyes flicking from fish to fish to ripples and lily pads and weeds, making sure the play of light was right and the scales were shining properly. 

He made a big red and orange koi circle the little boy who had reached for the little fish, and made rippling circles burst from a point where another koi broke the surface with its back for a second, setting a nearby lily pad tilting. As the track neared its end, he drew all the fish back to him and faded the illusion artfully. When silence fell, Jehan started to clap, prompting the others, and Grantaire grinned and stood up, gesturing to the paper cup by his cardboard sign with a bow. 

“Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Donations are greatly appreciated.” 

“That was good,” Jehan told him appreciatively when they’d gone away. “Very pretty.” 

Grantaire flung an arm around his shoulders and sighed, pleased. “Cheers, darling. Let’s go out tonight.” 

Jehan nodded towards his cardboard sign. “Better work some magic then. I can’t pay for both of us.” 

“Get a job then, asshole.” Grantaire shoved him away good-naturedly and went back to his place in front of the railings. Jehan took a mark and sat down on it nearby, watching with a smile as Grantaire winked at him and made flowers grow around the railings and bloom in the sunlight. 

He made a decent amount – enough for them to go out and get wasted at several of Montmartre’s shittier nightclubs, dancing with each other and with strangers until the early hours of the morning. Jehan’s apartment was too far away for them to be bothered to go there, so they rode their bikes to stay awake and keep warm, cruising down the middle of the empty roads and making the exhausting climb up to Sacré-Cœur to sit on the steps in front of the basilica and watch the sun rise at Jehan’s insistence. 

“I need to get an apartment,” Grantaire yawned tipsily, admiring the pale pinks and oranges in the clouds on the horizon. “And an actual job.” 

“Street performing _is_ a job.” 

“Only if you’re doing it legally,” Grantaire reminded him. “I need, like…a real job. With paychecks. I’ve never had one of those before.” 

“They’re not worth the hype. What you do now is so much cooler – you never know how much you could make. And you actually _enjoy_ what you’re doing.” 

“Awww,” Grantaire leaned back on the steps to grin up at Jehan. “You’re telling me you _didn’t_ like working in retail?” 

“I’ll curse you, R, don’t think that I won’t.” 

Grantaire laughed, and let Jehan shove him forward so he could sit behind him, knees bracketing Grantaire’s waist. 

“The sun rises over Paris,” Jehan said softly in his ear, “and the day is full of promise. I count to ten and breathe out declarations of love and beauty that no one is awake to hear. The hour is perfectly still – daywalkers not yet stirring, nightwalkers just drifting off to sleep. Their dreams pave the way for the waking dawn to creep gently through the windows of the watery-eyed souls who cling to unconsciousness, and I am the only living being in the whole world who sees the transition. 

“The sun rises over Paris, and the dead sleep untouched in their coffins as a married couple sleeps untouching in their bed, the distance between them as wide and unbreachable as an ocean trench way out to sea. Six feet below the surface of the earth, another married couple buried together have decomposed in such a way that all of their bones are mixed together in a beautiful heap, their limbs and ribs and joints intertwined and interlocked and indistinguishable from each other in the velvet darkness. 

“The sun rises over Paris, and the space between us is not an ocean trench or a skeletal embrace, but something in between, a transition from night to day and back again, everchanging and transformative. Our potential is limitless, and the day is full of promise.” 

Grantaire closed his eyes and smiled, and Jehan pressed a little kiss against his ear before he continued, composing poetry he’d probably forget in a couple of hours and holding Grantaire close as he did. 

**Author's Note:**

> Songs mentioned: [Journey to the West](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMYqWpzCo8k) and [Procession of the Spirits](http://grooveshark.com/#!/search/song?q=GHIBLI%3A+Joe+Hisaishi+Procession+of+the+Spirits) by Joe Hisaishi, and [Hanna's Theme Vocal Version](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT4mpQAHDBc) by The Chemical Brothers.
> 
> If you enjoyed this, please consider [buying me a coffee!](https://ko-fi.com/A221HQ9) <3


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